Gavin Kelly

As an appreciative user of the output of methodologists (and software package developers…) who enables clinicians to bring benefits to patients, I feel there is a complex chain of ‘public’ good at play.

Crick Crash Course: Immunotherapy Our series of morning lectures sharing science from across the Crick in a simple and accessible way continues.

How does immunotherapy work, and why do some patients respond while others don’t?

Book our free talk by Samra Turajlic, head of the Cancer Dynamics Lab here at the Crick, Director of @cruk-mi.bsky.social and head of the UK-wide MANIFEST programme.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/crick-cras...

A guy in a suit says to someone with a rock: "Hey, Sisyphus, when you've got a minute I'd like to discuss this progress report with you." Sisyphus confusedly thinks: "Uh ... oh"

Screen cap of parodic version of William Blake's "The Tyger" that begins: Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright (Not sure if I spelled that right) What immortal hand or eye Could fashion such a stripy guy? What the hammer that hath hewn it Into such a chonky unit? Did who made the lamb make thee, Or an external franchisee?

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

Am contributing to a collaborative dry-wet project proposal and everyone incl. myself thinks I should be writing about fancy algorithms. Instead, I spend all time on experimental design,power, what do we know or not, what do we aim to show? And on 2nd thought, that's probably OK for a statistician.

I'll be focussing on this paper in our journal club in the Francis Crick Institute - looking forward to getting to understand it better. This thread will be a useful primer as well.

Woman's Hour - Child benefit cap, Prof Edith Heard, Book banning - BBC Sounds We look at the mounting pressure to scrap the two child benefit cap.

Listen to our director Edith Heard on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour - discussing her career, working with AI and the importance of attracting the best global scientific talent to the UK.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Sonia Gandhi on building model brains to tackle Parkinson’s disease Sonia Gandhi on trying to tackle the fastest-growing neurological condition in the world.

Listen to Sonia Gandhi, Assistant Research Director at the Crick, on the latest episode of BBC 4’s The Life Scientific.

Sonia discusses her lab’s use of stem cells to drive the development of drugs and other therapies for Parkinson’s patients.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

if(“does this code handle weird edge-case yet” == “yes”){

So often there’s a gulf between knowing (a particular aspect of) a topic and understanding it from multiple perspectives. Like the analogy here to matrices vs linear algebra.

Edith Heard

Exciting day for @crick.ac.uk today: Edith Heard takes over as Director

We're looking forward to this new chapter in the story

www.crick.ac.uk/about-us/lea...

We didn't randomize, and there was no allocation concealment or blinding, and we can't really be sure what intervention they got or how the outcomes were measured, but we emulated a trial by drawing a DAG.

Just finished The Names by @florenceknapp.bsky.social What a heart-wrenching story, beautifully structured and shining with empathy. One to ‘cherish’

For the math folks on here: NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant. www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

Time for your yearly reminder that “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons”. #OTD 1948 Douglas Altman b (d 3 June 2018) “One of the most influential medical statisticians of the past 50 years” he led reforms in medical research reliability & reporting. 1/3

Figure 1: Experts and study participants (experienced open-source contributors) substantially overestimate how much AI assistance will speed up developers—tasks take 19% more time when study participants can use AI tools like Cursor Pro. See Appendix D for detail on speedup percentage and confidence interval methodology.

AI slows down experienced developers (against their expectations) in a randomized controlled trial of AI coding effectiveness.

metr.org/Early_2025_A...

Was great to meet you in person.

YouTube video by Francis Crick Institute Figuring Out Long COVID - with Emma Wall

Join @dremmacbw.bsky.social, a Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Crick as she explains how her team are working to improve understanding of the biology of long COVID and discovering new ways to both prevent and treat this complex disease.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMNe...

Congratulations to the Crick’s Samra Turajlić on her new appointment as Director of the @cruk-mi.bsky.social 🥂

When I found myself wanting to say “A sample is made up of a collection of samples” I knew I had to retire the s word.

"Why worry about your privacy If you aren't doing anything wrong?"

5-panel comic. (1) [teacher with long hair next to whiteboard] TEACHER: I’m supposed to give you the tools to do good science. (2) [teacher addressing students] But what *are* those tools? Methodology is hard and there are so many ways to get incorrect results. What is the magic ingredient that makes for good science? (3) TEACHER: To figure it out, I ran a regression with all the factors people say are important: [embedded list in sub-panel, cut off at end] Outcome variable: correct scientific results. Predictors: collaboration; skepticism of others’ claims; questioning your own beliefs; trying to falsify hypotheses; checking citations; statistical rigor; blinded analysis; financial disclosure; open data (4) TEACHER: The regression says two ingredients are the most crucial: 1) genuine curiosity about the answer to a question, and 2) ammonium hydroxide. (5) STUDENT: Wait, why did *ammonia* score so high? How did it even get on the list? LONG HAIR: ...And now you’re doing good science!

Good Science

xkcd.com/3101/

A black and white photo of Cecilia Payne

"Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE:"
#WomenInScience #WomenInSTEM #History
1/8

Starting to look like I might not be able to work at Harvard anymore due to recent funding cuts. If you know of any open statistical consulting positions that support remote work or are NYC-based, please reach out! 😅

Every week I'm reminded of how measurement, statistics, design, bias and error are so often treated as sidecars to "the science" in clinical research. It seems like the funders are coming around on this, which is great. Will institutions respond by investing in methods expertise?

🚨 Next month, we’ll be hosting a one-day event on target-trial emulation and other frameworks, exploring the role and potential of observational data for evaluating the effects of interventions

Open to everyone working in #datascience #biostatistics #clinicaltrials

Get your ticket 🔽
bit.ly/TTE_25

Whenever I ask that question, the answer is often “I did, a few years back”.

Theorem: They all are maths guys. Proof: by cardinal ordination (similar to induction)

Private meeting: conclave

Public meeting: convlex